Public Bill Committee

[Hugh Bayley in the Chair]

Clause 1

Duty of police authorities in relation to public accountability

Question (this day) again proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Hugh Bayley: I remind the Committee that with this we are considering: new clause 2Composition of police authorities
For section 4 of the Police Act 1996 (Membership of police authorities etc) substitute
Composition of police authorities
(1) Where a police authority has the same boundary as a local council, that council will be the police authority.
(2) Each police authority established under section 3 shall consist of 17 members.
(3) Where a police authority boundary and a local council boundary are not coterminous, two-thirds of the members of the police authority shall be directly elected by Single Transferable Vote.
(4) The members of the police authority subject to clause (3) above shall be elected once every four years on the same day as all or most of the local government elections in the force area.
(5) Elections per clauses (3) and (4) above shall be voted on by all members of the population over the age of 18 who reside within the relevant police authority boundary and whom are eligible to vote in local government elections.
(6) Where subsection (2) above applies, one-third of the members of the police authorities shall be nominated from local councillors within the police force area.
(7) Under subsection (1) or (2) above, police authorities may co-opt extra members to ensure diversity, experience and expertise.
(8) In subsection (4) above, co-opted members may be
(a) magistrates, or
(b) any person deemed appropriate by the existing members of the police authority to which outside members are being co-opted..

New Clause 4

Responsibilities of police authorities
(1) Each police authority will have the ability to determine its own local precept agreement with the relevant local council or councils as appropriate to its individual requirements.
(2) Each police authority will have the ability to determine its own fiscal priorities in accordance with its individual requirements.
(3) The Secretary of State may not give unsolicited directions to police authorities on local precepts, minimum budgets or fiscal priorities.
(4) Each police authority has a duty to consult with the Secretary of State, and to take account of national policing authorities.
(5) The Police Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(6) In section 6(2) (general functions of police authorities), leave out paragraph (a).
(7) In section 6(2)(c) leave out whether in compliance with a direction under section 38 or otherwise.
(8) In section 6 subsection (3) is omitted.
(9) For section 37A (setting of strategic priorities for police authorities) substitute
Policing objectives
Each individual police authority must determine objectives for the policing of their own local area.
(10) For section 38 (setting of performance targets) substitute
Where an objective has been determined under section 37, the relevant police authority shall establish levels of performance (performance targets to be aimed at in seeking to achieve the objective).
(11) Section 39 (Codes of Practice) is repealed.
(12) Section 41 (Directions as to a minimum budget) is repealed.
(13) Section 44 (Reports from Chief constables) is repealed.
(14) The Local Government Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(15) In section 31(9) (major precepting authorities: further recognition), after 1992, insert , but excluding police authorities and the Metropolitan Police Authority..
At the time we broke, we were in a middle of the debate, and Julie Kirkbride had the floor.
Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (Con) rose

Jim Fitzpatrick: Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

Julie Kirkbride: By all means.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She raised a small point in her comments before we broke that niggled me at lunchtime. She referred to some Welsh forces obsession with dealing with speed. I know what point she was trying to make, but does she agree that when investigations show that speed was clearly a contributory factor in the deaths of 700 people in 2007, resources must be directed to ensure that we save lives by restricting something that can be restricted?

Julie Kirkbride: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I am glad that he has got it off his chest, if it was troubling him during lunch. I have a great deal of sympathy with his point. My own family has experience of a fatal road traffic accident, so I know only too well how heartbreaking they can be. I am glad to put it on record that resources certainly need to be applied to traffic and speeding enforcement.
My point, to reprise quickly what I was saying, is that there is a democratic deficit in police representation of all the views in the community. My concern involves exactly such cases as when a chief constable has a bee in his or her bonnet about a particular issue. Accountability from the publics point of view as to whether that is the correct priority is somewhat unclear. It must go through the police authority, which may be happy with how precious, scarce resources are being spent. Despite the speech made by the hon. Member for Chesterfield, who called for communities to be allowed to raise as much of their own resources as they see fit, resources will always be limited, because the public have only a certain appetite for paying taxes and have other priorities. Policing must live within its means and decide on its priorities. The question is, how do the public make those priorities their priorities, and what accountability is there in respect of the police having to ensure that that happens?
As all parties have agreed that there is a problem of democracy and representation, it is disappointing that the Government have come up with a damp squib after they had suggested that they would do something more exciting. To be fair to the Government, I agree that it is a difficult and complicated area of public services to reform and that we need to proceed with caution. Democracy is highly desirable, but it could have some malign consequences if reform does not proceed as we would like it to.
One of the questions brought out in this mornings debate was, If we were to democratise police accountability, how would we organise that?. The first problem is the police force area. In some places it is very distinct and clear-cut: it is a county force, there is already a county council, everyone sees a community of interest and it becomes much clearer to administer. In my constituency, it crosses county boundaries. It is not obvious that people in Bromsgrove have a community of interest with other parts of the West Mercia force area. It is therefore more difficult to find one person who can speak for everybody and in whom everybody has confidence.
Similarly, that one person who might seem to represent a police force area could, in foreseeable circumstances, be encouraged to inflame incidents to attract votes come the all-important election. That leads to the question of when the elections should be. Should they be tied to other local authority elections? What turnout would we expect, hope or desire to achieve? Were they to be stand-alone elections, turnout would be a worry to anyone interested in democracy, because there is often a disappointing turnout at local authority elections and occasionally even at general elections. If the public had not bought into the idea of electing their police representatives, would they have a proper mandate? How would one try to increase the turnout?
Those are difficult issues. I was interested in the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Chesterfield. I am sure that he will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with all of them, but I did think that there was something in the idea of an elected representative representing a smaller area, where there is a more obvious community of interest. Having more than one elected representative in control of a police area reduces the prospects of what the hon. Member for Stourbridge talked abouta single BNP candidate, who has been elected and therefore is sacrosanct, taking charge of one of our primary police forces. That would be an area of interest if we were to proceed down the democratic road. It is disappointing that the Government did not have more ideas. As I said, I sympathise with the reasons why. We might all have to wait for a general election to hear more elucidation from all sides of what we might do with police forces.

Nadine Dorries: I speak as a representative of a constituency that is ranked next to bottom in a national rating of forces, so it will come as no surprise to the Minister that constituents in Bedfordshire feel very strongly about this issue. We do not like the fact that our police force came next to bottom, in terms of all its rankings, in the UK. The one thing that disappointed me more was that when the chief constable was held to account for the reasons why we had come next to bottom, there was nothing but total support from the police authority for both the chief constable and the force. There was no questioning of why we were in that position, just closed ranks and total support of the chief constable.
In clause 1, we have missed a golden opportunity to allow people, and particularly my constituents in Bedfordshire, to pass judgment on the person whom they see running their police force and delivering policing in their area. When people go to the ballot box, they know exactly which MP they are voting for. If the incumbent MP is a bad MP, people will go to the ballot box and vote them out. Exactly the same would happen if we had an elected chief constable as opposed to an authority.
I do not think that the residents of any of our constituencies would flock to vote for a police authority. I do see them flocking to vote for the person who, along with their MP and councillors, be it a unitary authority, county council, district council or whatever, will make a difference to how efforts to tackle crime are delivered on their streets. Surely if we had one person, a directly elected chief constable, which the Green Paper hinted at but which the Bill fails to provide, policing budgets would also be far more assiduously examined by the person responsible for delivering the services that the budget was to pay for. I am not sure that an authority would have the same attention to detail as there would be under an elected chief constable.
Will an authority be accountable in the same way? There will be no members of the public on it, so it will be a quango. They will all be elected by the senior appointments panel. Will the authority be accountable to the people and, if so, in what way? I ask that because I do not see anyone who wants to make an issue of policing on their streets using this route to do that. They will do it in exactly the same way as residents do it at the moment. They will come to their MP or go to their councillor. They will not think of going to their authority because it will not be giving regard to their views. The regard will be given to the elected personthe MP or the councillors. I fail to see how this clause takes note of anyone who lives in 16 Russell street in Bedfordshire. I cannot see how it takes account of that person being concerned about the fact that knife crime on their street has gone up over the past 12 months.
How will peoples views be taken account of in this clause? Will people have the opportunity to go and stand in front of the people who should have regard to their views? Will the general public have a chance? Will all my residents in Russell street be able to go and stand in front of this authority and say, Take regard of our views because we want more visible policing on our streets. We do not want you bringing speed cameras to the end of our street when there are knife crimes taking place there. Is that what the clause will do? I fail to see how it will. We have missed a golden opportunity here and I fail to see why the Government have not grasped it.
When I saw the Green Paper, I could envisage the voting booths. I could see a voting ballot with the councillors, with the MP and the directly elected chief constable. Everyone knows who my chief constable is and one of the reasons for that is that our police force performs so badly. People have no regard to his views at the moment and I cannot see how this clause will change that. At the moment, our chief constable is protected by the police authority and the general public can only go to councillors or the MP. Where does the clause change that? Where does it change the route by which the general public can go to change this particular disregard? Where does that apply?
One of the reasons that we have been given is that if any other method, or mechanism, were in place, it could politicise the police. The police are politicised; every one of us was lobbied about 42-day detention. Every one of was lobbied over various other issues by our local police. The police have their own representatives who lobby us, politicise the issues and come to speak to us. We want democracy, not politicisation. We want our police to be accountable. They are politicised anyway, so if the Ministers response is that we do not want to politicise the police force, what does he think about the fact that the police came here to lobby us on 42 days? Is that not politicisation? My police came to lobby me over the fact that they were one of the worst police forces in the country and about what is happening in their police force. Are they not politicising the issue by involving me in it? They are already politicised; we want to make them less politicised, more independent, less accountable to us and more accountable to the individual that people may get the chance to vote for to represent their particular views in their area.
I am sad that this clause is going to stand. I hope that the views of the people will be known through the media and all Members of the House when the Bill comes to its final stages. It is a golden opportunity missed and I fail to understand why the Minister has done that.

Ian Cawsey: I was not going to speak in the debate, but I was sparked into doing so by the last contribution. I mentioned to the Committee earlier on that I chaired a police authority for four years before coming to the House. People should be cautious about running down the road of directly electing the chief of police.
I pray in aid just two simple points. When I chaired my police authority, the chief constable was a chap called Tony Leonard. He was an extremely good chief constable and is now retired. When he came to our area, one of the things he did was to discover that there was a practice going on in our force areait was going on in lots of other force areas as wellwhich was to pretend that they were solving crimes that they were not. They were getting police officers to go around jails to persuade already convicted people to cough up to crimes that they almost certainly had not committed, in order to make the figures look better. Our chief constable thought that that was wrong and that we should record the crimes that people report and then the ones that are solved.

Simon Burns: I am intrigued by that. What happened when the prisoners didto use the hon. Gentlemans phrasecough up? Were they then taken to court, and, if they were, what incentive was there for them to cough up? If they were not taken to court, on what legal basis were they not taken to court, having admitted to committing a crime?

Ian Cawsey: They were certainly not taken to courtquite the reverse. I think they were encouraged to believe that their life in prison might be better if they did cough up. More to the point, the crimes were written off as solved crimes; victims were told they had been solved, and they were no longer on the books as unresolved. This is a common practice across the country; it is not just happening in my area.

Simon Burns: Can the hon. Gentleman explain under what legal basis such people were not taken to court if they coughed up?

Ian Cawsey: All those things are a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service. It is not at all unusual for someone to be prosecuted for one crime, and lots of others to be taken into consideration. It does not necessarily change the sentence.
Irrespective of the mechanisms, the point is that it was a dishonest practice employed so that police forces could put out better figures on crime than was the reality. Do not tell me that once bosses are been elected, they are not going to start to bend in the wind under those pressures when elections are close, because they will.

Nadine Dorries: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that, if there were a directly elected police commissioner, residents would have the ability to choose the kind of policing that they wanted on their streets? Policing would be delivered in a much more diverse and locally required way. There would not be any need to go around getting prisoners to cough up for things they had not done, because such statistics would not be the basis of peoples votes when directly electing the chief commissioner. They would be voting on the basis of how safe their streets were, and how safe they felt, not on statistics.

Ian Cawsey: Much as I like the hon. Lady, I think that is an extremely naïve view. It also implies that crime and disorder in a neighbourhood are all just about the police, which they most certainly are not. The way to get good crime reduction in an area is through partnerships, in which the police are only one partner. I agree in this regard: it is about what local people do in their neighbourhoods in conjunction with the people who actually deal with crime. The idea that only police deal with crime is nonsense. To blame the police for crime is like blaming an umbrella for the rain. They are only one of the partners in this.

Nadine Dorries: I like the hon. Gentleman him very much, too. I grew up on a very rough council estate in Liverpool and I assure him that, at the end of almost every street in my estate, there was a blue and white police car. We did not dare to misbehave: if we did, we quite often got a belt in the bizzie. But they were ever-present and the high-level, visible policing on our streets acted as a deterrent that meant that we as kids owned the streets we played in, not the criminals. If we had somebody accountable, residents would have that power to reclaim the streets for themselves and their children, because they would be able to demand high-level, visible policing. It would make a huge difference.

Ian Cawsey: The hon. Lady should, if she can access the records, look at the number of calls to the police for service in the days when she was a young girl, compared with the situation now, when she is a mature lady. I think she will see that there has been a significant change, and it is those sorts of demands on police which have led to changes in the way they do their jobs. I do not disagree with her about accountability, but am simply saying that if the top man is elected personally, the grubby electoral process will have its effect. We will see the sorts of practices that brave chief constables like Tony Leonard kicked out of the system. When Humbersides figures came out, they were right down at the bottom, because they stopped counting all the crimes they previously wrote off. He was castigated for that, but he was the one who was doing it honestly. Do we really want to return to a time when all the incentives were perverse?
I once had the great honour of going out in America with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and meeting lots of police officers there. They have elected chiefs of police there. When we spoke to police officers at a lower rank than commissioner, I can say that they all, to a person, said, Why do we have to be involved in a system in which if we want to go higher than lieutenantI think it is lieutenant in Americawe have to become politicians? That is wrong; we are professionals who do a professional job, and it is not for us to enter the world of politics. That is for politicians. We should do our job professionally and under the accountability of politicians, but not as politicians.

David Ruffley: I want to ensure that the hon. Gentleman is clear that the policy of Her Majestys Opposition is not for the election of a sworn officer or of a chief constable[Interruption.] If he can contain himself, in his sedentary position, I will explain. Some Back Benchers and Opposition Members have said that that should be the case, following the pure American model, but that is not official Conservative party policy. Our view is that there should be a lay commissioner who is not a sworn officer. We are not in the business of electing sworn officers. I wanted to make that clear, and I would be grateful if he acknowledged that he is clear on that.

Ian Cawsey: I was responding to the hon. Ladys comments, not those of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford, although I think that some of those issues are still relevant.
I hope that the Committee will bear it in mind that it is easy to get sucked down the route of greater accountability and more elected posts, but that the police provide an important service to all our communities and what they do deserves all our support. We need to find ways of making them accountable without having the perverse incentives that end up giving us dishonest figures. Such figures might make us feel better, but the reality on the streets would be much worse.

Vernon Coaker: May I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Bayley? It is the first time that you have chaired the Committees formal proceedings, and I am sure that we all look forward to serving under you.
The debate has been interesting and I must say to all who have taken part, including Opposition Members and my hon. Friends, that it has been good and brought several relevant issues to the fore. There is no one on this Committee, in this Parliament or outside, who is not reflecting on what we need to do to improve the accountability of police officers and on how to ensure that the public have an effective and informed voice in trying to influence how the police operate. The police are also reflecting on that. If one goes to different police forces, one will see that they are trying all sorts of different ways of involving the public, through face-to-face meetings, more leaflets, the internet, neighbourhood policing and mobile police stations. They have longer opening hours at police offices, make greater use of civilians and go into schools. All those things are going on as the police strive to give to policing the public face that people want, and try to ensure that people feel that there is a proper response when they contact the police.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds challenged me on an issue on which there is real disagreement, but he knows that there are difficulties with all the various models. One reason why he knows that is because his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bromsgrove has said that she sees why the Government are acting with caution, and that she is worried about some issues in respect of her Front Bench. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire showed a much more robust and dynamic desire and passion for directly elected commissioners. That is why the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds had to intervene to clarify that that is not official Conservative policy, which is for a lay commissioner, albeit elected, and for the abolition of police authorities. Conservative policy is not for an elected police chief who would have operational control, whereas the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire appeared to be going down that route.
Mrs. Dorriesindicated assent.

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Lady is nodding, so that is clearly what she wants. I have problems with the idea of an elected lay commissioner, so I think that the idea of having an elected police chief would be fraught with difficulty in this country, as do her Front-Bench colleagues. That is why her colleague was quick to intervene.

David Ruffley: To be clear, I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not criticising a Bank-Bench Member, from any part of the House, for expressing interesting views. Labour Back-Bench Members, too, might legitimately back the New Local Government Network and Local Government Association proposition. It has not been mentioned today, but is a valid take on enhanced accountability: it would match basic command unit areas with second-tier local district and borough councils and allow elected councillors to hire and fire BCU commanders. That is another model of which I urge him to take account. It is yet another contribution to a very wide-ranging and variegated debate.

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Gentleman is right to put that on the record. A variety of views are held across Parliament and within parties. However, is that not a good reason for the Government to take stock and consider the way forward, rather than rush headlong towards the direct election of crime and policing representatives, which we originally proposed? Given the difference of views and the fact that no consensus exists across the political spectrum, is not the mature and responsible course not to continue to charge towards a road crash, but to consider ways of improving accountability and to take stock and reflect more calmly and rationally on how to take the debate forward? We withdrew the proposals in the Bill so that we can do that.

Lynda Waltho: Following on from that point and to some extent a discussion this morning, will my hon. Friend describe, so that I can tell my constituents, what it would be like to have a BNP chief constable, lay commissioner, or whatever? We should bear in mind that Nick Griffin said on Newsnight recently:
You cant possibly separate the hard drugs trade from the question of Islam and particularly Pakistani immigration.
Will my hon. Friend describe the effect of such thoughts and background on policing policy in the west midlands? It would be horrendous.

Vernon Coaker: My hon. Friend is right to point out the danger of such a person becoming either a lay commissioner or a more directly involved commissioner responsible for an entire police force. Nobody wants a BNP candidate elected to office. I do not want to negate the serious point being made, but we are talking about providing the opportunity for BNP candidates to be elected to such positions. We can all recognise the danger of that. As law makers and legislators, we have a responsibility to decide whether to take that into account when developing laws. One can only begin to imagine the consequences, not only for the various communities in the west midlands, where my hon. Friends constituency is situated, but for London and all the other areas of the country. It would be catastrophic.

Nadine Dorries: For the record, my Front-Bench colleagues were well aware of my views. However, I support their position on lay commissioners. Nobody wants to see a BNP commissioner or even a councillor, but, in effect, the Minister is saying that we cannot trust the people to vote.

Vernon Coaker: That is where we start to get into difficulty. The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point about trusting the electorate, but we have to be extremely careful when we are talking about the police. Let me show how careful we have to be.
Conservative Front Benchers are concerned about the problem, so they have come up with proposals to overcome it. Suppose an extremist is elected, or somebody who wants to ban road humpsevery one of us could think not only of extreme politicians but particular issues. Members can imagine what would happen if debate on such an issue happened to coincide with the election of a police chief. I do not know what the question is in Bedfordshireperhaps it is to ban farm animals walking down the road. In Durham, it could be to ban lap dancing, and so on. At a particular time, someone could get elected on that single issue. The more extreme case involves the BNP. That is a real issue, and those who want a single elected person must decide what to do about.
The Tory Front-Bench proposalthe hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds may say more about itis reasonable, but it demonstrates that there is a problem. Their position is that the election would be rerun if a BNP candidate, or someone who says no to lap dancing in Durham, or anybody who is not regarded as acceptable were elected. I take the point about democracy, but there are consequences that have to be thought through.
This is a serious debate, and I am not trying to score points. The Government have taken a hit, but it was the right thing to do. We have withdrawn from direct elections for crime and policing representatives because we need to proceed with caution. Others who continue to propose direct elections in whatever form are wrestling with the same problems. If they were in Government, I believe that they would step back and reflect on how to deal with those problems.

David Ruffley: I do not wish to interrupt the Ministers flow, but on a point of clarification, my predecessor in this post, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), indicated that we would consult on a power of recall, of the sort that is found in California, as a possible check and balance. There would not be an automatic recall if a left-wing or right-wing extremist were elected. The power of recall would operate as it does in the United States, particularly in California: if a certain percentage of those who voted at the previous election petitioned for a rerun of the electiona recall electionthat would happen. Certain triggers are required before a rerun could happen. I hope that that is of assistance to the Committee when considering the Ministers comments.

Vernon Coaker: Of course that is of assistance to the Committee, but it also demonstrates the point that I am trying to make. Others who are thinking about models for taking the proposal forward are concerned about some of the dangers that my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge and the hon. Member for Bromsgrove raised. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire asks, Dont you trust the electorate? but people from every political party and in every area of the country are concerned about the matter and are trying to find a balanceto square the circle. If there are direct elections and somebody is elected who is unacceptable by any stretch of the imaginationI prefaced my remarks by saying that nobody wants a BNP candidate to be electedwhat would we actually do about it?
To be fair to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, he recognises the problem and is trying to find a way to deal with it. Because we are in government, we do not think it acceptable, when we are putting a Bill through Parliament, to say that we are wrestling with the issues to see whether we can produce a reasonable set of proposals. We were concerned that virtually every authority, council and police force in this country opposed what we said we would do. In government, one has to make a choice. The hon. Member for Chesterfield rightly said that we have to show leadership. I agree with that, but sometimes we have to show leadership by saying that perhaps we ought to think again.

Sally Keeble: Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes the police have to police to protect minority interests? That could pose a real difficulty if somebody has to answer in an election that is just around the corner. I am thinking of the policing of some of the early fascist marches in Birmingham and around the black country. Someone who had to stand for popular election later might not have taken the position that the police did then. They were absolutely right to take that position and have now got public opinion with them.

Vernon Coaker: We could go on and on about this and replay the record again and again, it is such an important issue. Mr. Bayley, I know that this morning, Sir Nicholas felt that we had not made much progress, but the quality and importance of the debate is such that it deserves the Committee spending a considerable amount of time on it. Nobody has abused that.

David Ruffley: Does the Minister agree that although in spatio-temporal terms we may have not made as much progress as Sir Nicholas wished, in terms of the quality of the arguments and the way in which they have been teased out, we have?

Vernon Coaker: I normally understand what the hon. Gentleman means, but I am not sure that I do on this occasion. I normally understand his questions, even if I am not totally sure of the answer. However, I think I understand him and I agree with him on that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North makes my point exactly. Sometimes what sounds good and in the short term makes someone popular is actually the wrong thing to do. As politicians, we almost accept that, but what about a police officer or an elected commissioner who stands for election at a particular time? We can all cite issues that incite populist ragefor example, setting up a paedophile hostel or housing for drug addicts and ex-offenders. The police say, Actually this is a good thing to do, but someone might say, No, its a terrible thing to do, and get elected. It is a difficult issue.
As my hon. Friend said, sometimes the police have to stand up for minority opinion and minorities. That is why in this country for yearspolice officers will say thispolice officers have been agents of the Crown. That is why police officers will say it is so important to them that the allegiance they swear and the oath they take are to the Crown. In effect, the police are saying that it is for them to police according to the law, without fear or favour. As my hon. Friend said, that means protecting and policing difficult situations in a way that is sometimes hugely unpopular. We should consider changing that balance only with great care, because if we get it wrong, we could have all sorts of problems.
I am reminded of the question of accountability. I am sure that we have all seen young girls or boys play football: they chase the ball and when it goes over one side, everyone chases it and there is nobody on the rest of the pitch; all of sudden, somebody boots it over the other side and everyone runs over the other side. If we are not careful, we are in danger of creating a situation in which everyone just chases the ball. That does not make good football and it would not necessarily make good policing. We have to consider that. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds rightly challenges me, asking, Why did you drop that proposal? Whether or not he agrees with why we dropped it, that is why we did. That is why we changed it.
The hon. Gentleman asked me about the role of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) in what we do. We dropped the matteralthough perhaps dropped is not the right word. We have put the question to one side so that we can reflect on direct elections and see whether we can move forward in a way that takes account of the various problems that have been raised. We must proceed with caution, but we cannot do that and take account of the various problems that people have raised in the Committee and beyond if clause 1 of the Bill is about direct elections. It would be irresponsibility of the highest order.

David Ruffley: The Minister has given a perfectly fair reply to one of my questions: why, between the Green Paper and publication of the Bill, were the Green Paper measures dropped? For the benefit of the Committee, will he explain again what exactly the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside is working on? What is his remit? Will his work be published anywhere in a way that this Committee can look at? I am not being argumentative or seeking to make a political point. I just want to know what he has been asked to do by the Home Secretary.

Vernon Coaker: The Home Secretary has asked my right hon. Friend to conduct a review in relation to the Labour party. I think that I have mentioned this to the hon. Gentleman before. A review is being conducted of whether we can come up with a model that meets all concerns and that can be included in our manifesto for the next general election. To do that, my right hon. Friend will talk to various people.

Simon Burns: What is the time scale?

Vernon Coaker: Before the next general election. Clearly, there will need to be something for the manifesto.
I have read and reread the complicated new clauses tabled by hon. Member for Chesterfield. They would put in place different systems in different parts of the country: police authorities in Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Suffolk and Warwickshire would be brought entirely under the auspices of the county councils, but the other 35 authorities would have a different system. That seems strange. Furthermore, the proposal to have no statutory requirement for independent members is a mistake, because they bring an awful lot to police authorities. I am surprised by that aspect of his proposals. He has devised an incredibly complicated system that most people would find difficult to understand.

Paul Holmes: On the latter point, as we have discussed at some length, single transferable vote elections elect much more representative bodies of people, as has been shown in all the countries of the world where they are used. Most of the independent appointees currently in place would therefore not be needed. However, there would be scope in the new clause to appoint people such as magistrates. On the Ministers point about the proposals being complicated, the Governments proposals in the Green Paper, which have now been dropped, would have imposed another layer of complication on top of the existing complicated layers of local government in this country. Unless we start from scratch and rewrite the whole local government system in England and Wales, we will have no option but to lay down a complicated system over an already complicated system, as the Government themselves proposed to do.

Vernon Coaker: We dropped the proposals in part because they were complicated. We wanted to try to come up with something simpler. If we want people to participate, we must make the system one that they can understand.
I have spent some time replying to questions about why we removed our proposals in the Bill for direct elections. We have talked about the need to proceed with caution and some of the difficulties that we are all having in trying to devise an acceptable model that will enable us to move forward. None the less, clause 1 will help to make a difference. Much emphasis has rightly been placed on subsection (1), which strengthens the requirements in the Police Act 1996. As I have said, police authorities will have to have regard to the views of the public, rather than merely obtain those views.
Subsection (2), which sits alongside that provision, will require Her Majestys inspectorate of constabulary to inspect police authorities, and that will be done much more vigorously from April. We will require the inspectorate to look specifically at police authorities to see how well they have done on subsection (1). I say to the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire that if what she says about the police authority in Bedfordshire is correct, and I have no reason to believe that it is or is not, under the terms of the clause, it will be appropriate for people to request that the inspectorate look at what has happened. That will be one way forward.
I could go on at great length about other things, but I have tried to answer the kernel of the debate. Hon. Members will have to decide themselves about direct elections and how we can take that forward. Serious problems would emerge from directly electing people to policing positions, whether as an elected commissioner, a lay commissioner or along the lines that we proposed and that the Liberal Democrats now propose. Surely, while we work to resolve the problems of extremists or single-issue people being elected and all the other questions that we are concerned about, it is much more sensible to step back, to reflect and to try to build a consensus than to just drive forward, ignoring all the warnings that we have been given and all the views that have been put to us by everybody, except some people in every party.
At the Association of Police Authorities conference, which the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, the hon. Member for Chesterfield and I attended, someone put it to me that the only people who agree with each other on direct elections are a few people at the front of every major political partythat a few people at the top of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties were the only people who agreed with direct elections. All the other local government members of every party, all the police forces and all the bodies that represent local government in all its guises oppose it. I have said this before, but I shall repeat it because it is crucial: sometimes leadership is about saying, Lets stop and reflect. Leadership is not only about saying, Everybody disagrees with me, so the only way I can show that Im a leader is by charging them and taking them on. Sometimes it is about reflecting on what they tell us, and with that, I beg to move that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 6.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Police senior appointments panel

David Ruffley: I beg to move amendment 50, in clause 2, page 2, line 12, after of, insert
up to ten persons nominated by the Secretary of State after consultation with the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers..

Hugh Bayley: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 49, in clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 13 to 16

David Ruffley: The amendments relate to a clause whose general purpose we support. As many hon. Members will be aware, under the current appointments system, senior chief officer roles, covering the posts of chief constable, assistant chief constable and deputy chief constable and their equivalents in London, are advertised by police authorities. Eligible candidates then choose for which posts they wish to apply and the successful candidate is appointed by the relevant police authority, subject to approval by the Home Secretary.
That ministerial approval follows advice from the senior appointments panel, which currently operates on a non-statutory basis. It is made up of people drawn from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities, the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office. In addition, there is one independent member. Until December last, the chairman was Sir Ronnie Flanagan in his role as Her Majestys chief inspector of constabulary, although my understanding is that the Home Office has indicated that he has agreed to continue chairing the SAP in an independent capacity since stepping down from that post.
The thrust of the clause that we are seeking to amend, and the reason why we like it, is that the current system needs reform. That is argued for across the police community on the grounds that, under the current regime, there is insufficient career management and succession management to get the right individuals with the right skills into the right jobs in the right forces at the right time. The system also lacks true transparency, which most of the public service reform debate is tasked to deliver.
HMIC and some police authorities argue that reform needs to ensure a better supply of chief officers to match the posts to be filled. I do not agree with all that ACPO says on this subject, but its response to the Green Paper states that the
chief officer appointments system needs to be looked at,
especially in relation to
succession planning, especially for the most important posts,
and talks about
building a national cadre of top police
officers.
The APA makes a separate point, which I believe is correct, that
police authorities do not always set the best possible lists of candidates for
the posts that authorities are advertising, that
many good superintendents are not selected as eligible to become chief officers,
and that
there is wide agreement that we need better talent management.
That was in the APAs response to the Green Paper published in the autumn.
To bring this alive with real-world examples, one has only to look at a report in The Times of 19 June 2007 on the difficulties that police authorities said they encountered under the existing SAP regime, which the clause seeks to reform, when trying to fill senior vacancies. It states:
The vacancy for Chief Constable of Lincolnshire attracted just one candidate, despite being advertised twice. In Dyfed-Powys, where the police chief resigned
in interesting circumstances,
only two people applied for the job.
The article also observed that only four people applied for the post of chief constable of the Greater Manchester force. The understanding was that the police authority had hoped for a longer shortlist for what is a key strategic role.
I hasten to add that, in my experienceI have met and spoken to themthe individuals who took up the roles were very good candidates, but the point is that there is insufficient competition when there are so few applications for vacancies, as the report made clear. To give another example: although the current chief constable, Sara Thornton, is excellent, when the post of chief constable of Thames Valley police was advertised while she was acting chief constable, she was unopposed for that full-time role. Those are observations of police authority members to whom one speaks and to whom ACPO speaksthey think that there is a problem with how SAP operates at the moment.
Tacking towards amendments 50 and 49, the first amendment, in seeking to limit the number of members of the SAP to up to 10 persons is designed to tease out from the Minister how he sees the new, improved, reformed SAP operating in practice. In a minute I shall get to some of things that the new SAP will need to do and what his views are on the new roles, but let us stick with the amendments for the time being, working out the cost and how top-heavy the management will be.
The regulatory impact assessment published in conjunction with the Bill says of the clause:
The Home Office will require four staff which is expected to cost £0.8m per annum. These staff will support the panel.
We are talking not about the panel itself, but about the Home Office secretariat. It continues:
The independent chair and independents will receive allowances totalling approximately £0.1m per annum.
In other words, the four members of staff are expected to cost £800,000. Is that figure to be reviewed in the light of any public expenditure survey round or efficiency savings that the Home Secretary will be conducting across her Department? I am rather interested in those figures in the impact assessment and in the arrangements for the new panel and for the secretariat that, we are told in the notes, is necessary to support it.
The second amendment in the group relates to something entirely different: the status of those whom the clause seeks to include on a statutory basis as members of the panel, both the APA and, in particular, ACPO. Amendment 49, which would delete a statutory membership for ACPO and others on the new reformed panel, is a probing amendment.
That goes to the heart of something that my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the vigorous and hugely impressive new shadow Home Secretary, said. I do not say that because I am a lickspittle jobsworth, but because in his very first outing, within hours of being made shadow Home Secretary on 19 Januarythe Minister will rememberand in his opening speech on Second Reading, my hon. Friend said something that bears repetition in relation to the clause, which seeks to put ACPOs membership of the new, reformed SAP on a statutory basis. Asking who should be on this new panel on a statutory basis, he said:
The principle of an appointments panel is sensible, but it is strange that it gives the Association of Chief Police Officers a statutory position in advising on appointments when the status of ACPO itself remains undefined.
Liberty made the same point to the Committee in the evidence session last week and in its written evidence. I hasten to add that I think that it is a question for us to reflect on and for the Minister to give us his views on; I still ponder myself what the definition of ACPO is. As my hon. Friend went on to say:
Is it an external reference group for Home Office Ministers, or a professional association protecting senior officers interests? Is it a national policing agency, or is it a pressure group arguing for greater police powers?[Official Report, 19 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 528.]
For those of us who have looked at it and those of us who are boring ex-lawyers, I was also struck by the fact that ACPO is not governed by any statute. It is instead a company limited by guarantee, which is a little known but interesting fact. In addition, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply to that interesting, important body.
I wish to place it clearly on the record that the current head of ACPO, Sir Ken Jones, is someone for whom I have a great deal of respect. The ACPO leads with whom I have occasion to come into contact weekly and continually are men and women of calibre. I do not seek to criticise much of the excellent work done by ACPO to improve advice not just to Ministers but to members of the Opposition, including me, but we must go to first principles and look at the structure of what ACPO is. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell pointed out, there are interesting questions.
My hon. Friend went on to say:
Unless ACPOs status is sorted out, we shall have some doubts over whether it should have this role
that is, sitting on the SAP
on a statutory basis. I hope that Ministers will be able to provide more information about that in Committee, and that we shall have more opportunities to debate it then.[Official Report, 19 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 529.]
Amendment 49 should be taken in the spirit of probing and honest inquiry eloquently set out by my hon. Friend on Second Reading. As I pointed out, similar questions about the constitutional position of ACPO were raised by Liberty, to take just one example.
Before I conclude, because we might not have the opportunity for a debate on clause stand part, the Conservatives have one or two questions for the Minister. Having granted that the SAP needs reform and that we give general support to the thrust of the clause, we need to understand what the SAP, in its reformed guise, will do that is new. My amendments make serious reservations about the composition of the panel. The Government and ACPO believe that not enough emphasis is always placed on chief officers contributing to national work, so the SAP will certainly have a weather eye on that.
The Government acknowledge that the Association of Police Authorities has a point when it says that it is essential to retain the centrality of the police authority role in chief officer appointments, but it will not be quite as central as formerly, will it, if the new SAP will exercise a more strategic view for certain posts? There will be an inherent tension between the greaterI use the word advisedlycentralised powers that the clause will bring forth and the pure or relative autonomy enjoyed now by police authorities.
We also need to pay advertence to something mentioned in the Green Paper. It is not in the Bill, but it is an interesting idea, and I should be grateful if the Minister shed some light on it: the creation of a national college of police leadership. Presumably, it would build on the police college at Bramshill. How might that operate in conjunction with the SAP? It would be interesting to hear what the timeline is for creating the new national college, branding it and consulting on how it might work. This is an apposite moment to hear from the Minister.
We also need to pay advertence to what Sir Norman Bettison said in evidence to the Committee last week when responding to one of my questions, because it is really important if we are to get a handle on the SAPs new activities. Sir Norman said that
unless the intention is to mimic the military approach of moving people
senior officers
to posts around the country against their will,
he was sceptical about whether the clause would have the effect that we in Committee hope it will, which is to improve the flow and numbers of applicants to the top jobs in policing. He went on to say that
unless talent management is taken to the extent of directing who applies for which jobsthere are personal and domestic barriers against doing soit is not clear that the senior appointments panel arrangements
in the clause
will affect the number of people applying for particular posts.
And, he concluded his response to me by saying:
It will not deal with the problem that we are all interested in solving.[Official Report, Policing and Crime Public Bill Committee, 27 January 2009; c. 9, Q5-6.]
I wondered what the Minister thought the SAP might do on directing individuals, because Sir Norman used the words direction and military approach. Is that on the end of spectrum at which the new SAP will operate? I do not know the answer, and I am not even sure that I agree with it, but, conceptually, we need the Minister to be clear about it. Will the SAP have anything like that power to direct?
I conclude my remarks by citing the Home Offices impact assessment of the SAP reforms:
Currently, the system is one in which police authorities exercise one of their relatively few powersof chief officer appointmentin a context which is in practice very lightly managed from the centre. Many police authorities are likely to see the changes to a much more managed system
that is what the clause will do
as encroaching heavily on a core role and protest accordingly.
It went on to state:
Likewise, currently individual aspiring chief officers are fairly lightly managed. The new system would be more directivebut also more supportive and transparent.
The new arrangements should be more directive, which is why we support the clause, and the amendments, which would be supportive, certainly would not undermine the purport and force of the clause in any way. However, the impact assessment is also correct to state that the new arrangements will be more supportive and transparent. The critical issue is not whether the new system will be more directive, but the extent to which it will be so, and on that I seek the Ministers views.

Paul Holmes: I have two or three brief observations and questions. We all know that there are great difficulties in getting enough people for the post of chief constable. The problem is related not only to the police; it applies to head teachers jobs throughout the country, too. However, I am not quite clear how amendments 50 and 49 relate to improving the flow of applicants. The Association of Police Authorities and Liberty separately raised the same concern about making the senior appointments panel a statutory body, rather than non-statutory. I should welcome the Ministers comments on why the Government feel the need to make it into a statutory body and how that would improve its performance, as opposed to what has happened so far. The Bill states that the panel should consist of representative members made up of three groups of people: those nominated by the Secretary of State, by ACPO and by the APA, although it does not go into detail about actual numbers and relative balances. I would also welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds on that.
Amendments 50 and 49 go down the road of giving more central power to the Secretary of State by saying that the senior appointments panel would have 10 representatives. Unlike the Bill, they define the figure and say that the members would definitely be appointed by the Secretary of State, rather than a mixture of sources.

David Ruffley: If it assists the Committee and the hon. Gentleman, I want to explain that the amendments are probing in nature. The purpose of the amendment concerned with 10 persons is to tease out the cost and manpower implications. I was at pains to explain that the purpose of amendment 49 was to tease out the statutory basis of the membership.

Paul Holmes: I accept that, as probing amendments, they will not be put to the vote, but I remain alarmed by provisions that would give more direct power to the Secretary of State, and alarmed that she would have the sole power to appoint the representatives10 persons, under the amendmentto the senior appointments panel. It is a movement of power in the opposite direction from the one for which we have been arguing: we should be devolving and decentralising power, and creating more independence within the police force and police authorities. Under the amendment, the power would be centralising and that would be in the wrong direction.
How does the Minister regard the number of representatives from the three different bodies mentioned in the Bill? How would that turn out in numbers, and what would be the balance between the three groups? What is the Governments reasoning for saying that we need to move the senior appointments panel on to a statutory basis, as opposed to the current, non-statutory basis?

Vernon Coaker: I start by thanking the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds for his general welcome and support for the clause. It is important to clarify that point. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Chesterfield took the same approach, but I shall respond to a couple of the points that he made. The reform is important. Mr. Bayley, is it all right if I curtail my remarks a little? We are having a clause stand part debate later, so I shall keep some of what I want to say generally until that debate, while answering some of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds. Would that be appropriate and helpful? I shall make a few remarks before turning to amendments 50 and 49 and the next set of amendments before the clause stand part debate.

Hugh Bayley: We could have a separate debate on such matters.

Vernon Coaker: Absolutely. I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds. I am a big supporter of the Association of Chief Police Officers. I appreciate his point, so I preface my remarks by saying that I am not arguing that he is not a big supporter of ACPO. No doubt people will say that it is a body limited by guarantee and that that makes a big difference. Since I have been in my post, it has acted in the most professional way; again, I know that the hon. Gentleman agrees. ACPO has given advice and told us its thoughts on policy. It has challenged the Government. It has said what it thinks, and we have asked it for help. At times, it has been difficultin the proper sense of the wordbecause it thinks that we are perhaps not going in the right direction. It will do exactly the same if the Government change at the next election. If there is a Liberal Democrat Government or whatever kind of Government, it will do exactly the same. It recognises that its role is to reflect the interests, as it sees them, of ACPO and policing in general, but it also recognises, quite properly, that irrespective of which party is in power, it is for Governments to govern and Governments will make decisions about what they believe is the appropriate policy to pursue.
Sir Ken Jones, as ACPO president, has done an excellent job, as have the other ACPO officers who advise me on a range of issues, as well as the general body known as ACPO. It works exceedingly well. What also works well is the tripartite governance of policing, which is part of the debate that we started to have before. I am referring to the balance between the Home Office, ACPO and the APA. That tripartite policing governance structure, despite its difficulties and the criticisms that people make of it, works pretty well. We have tried to reflect thatI will come on to this in more detailin the structure of the clause relating to the reformed senior appointments panel. Those elements are an important part of the existing SAP, which is on a voluntary basis, and the new enhanced statutory set-up for the SAP should reflect that as well. Some of the detail will have to be set out in various arrangements. Hon. Members can read the Bill as well as I can. It sets out that we will do just that.
May I update the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds? I am told that the estimate for the cost is now £500,000. We will keep that under review. He is absolutely right. Sometimes, we spend two or three hours on clause 1, which is a very important debate. This clause is extremely important. If we get it right, no one will disagree when they read the functions, and we shall discuss that.
To answer the hon. Member for Chesterfield, the reason why we have put the SAP on a statutory basis is to try to ensure that we put down exactly what we want it to do and that we help it to be more effective at delivering the things that we all want. We all talk about the need for a greater pool of candidates. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds was right to point out that, notwithstanding the ability of some people who have been appointed to the position of chief constable in this countrySara Thornton, whom he cited as an example, is an excellent chief constablewe want more people to come forward. We hope that a strengthened SAP is one way in which we can achieve that.

David Ruffley: The Minister was kind enough to say that my question about the cost was pertinent and he helpfully said that the cost estimate had been reviewed downwards from £800 million to £500 million. [Interruption.] Perhaps he could repeat the figures.

Vernon Coaker: The estimate has gone from £800,000 to £500,000, not £800 million to £500 million.

David Ruffley: I am most grateful to the Minister. On what basis has the figure gone from £800,000 to £500,000? It seems to be a very recent renewal of the figure since the impact assessment was published.

Vernon Coaker: That has been done on the basis of an up-to-date assessment of what we think will be appropriate, but I will keep that figure under review and to ensure that it is appropriate in terms of ensuring that the SAP has the resources to deal with the important functions that we are setting out for it. I should like to reassure anyone reading our proceedings that the Home Office will absorb those costs. I want to be clear about that. We will keep the matter under review.
Let me respond to the hon. Member for Chesterfields points. We all agree that these matters are important, and we are trying to ensure that we will have a strengthened, improved and more independent SAP, instead of it simply being a sift for senior appointments. We want it to be a more dynamic organisation that can help to drive forward change and other things that we want. That will help to make a difference.

Paul Holmes: The Minister might be coming to this point, but let me ask him about the more independent, dynamic panel that he has mentioned. I have asked exactly what proportion of the representatives it is envisaged will be drawn from the three groupings that are listed. The APA has said:
The Home Secretary appointees on the panel should not be capable of outnumbering police community appointees. To have credibility it needs to be seen to be a genuine tripartite body.
How many will come from each of the three legs?

Vernon Coaker: We want a proper balance among the various people who are nominated to the panel.
A significant and important change that has generated debate is the independence of the panels chair. The hon. Gentleman alluded to that. One reason why we have asked Ronnie Flanagan to be the interim chair, as we move from the current system to the system that we want, which is subject to the passage of this Bill, is to assuage concerns about the current system.
The hon. Gentleman asked about functions, which are laid out in the Bill. We can debate which are the most important, but he will know that I have been particularly interested in trying to increase the pool of candidateshe rightly raised that issueas well as the number from different ethnic backgrounds. We are trying to deal with that, and it will be an important part of the work that the panel tries to do. The police service is working hard to change that, and the SAP might look at that work to see what advice it could give to move that issue forward. The hon. Gentleman will note that the Bill contains an important power, under proposed new section 53D, to confer additional functions should that be necessary.
The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds asked about the national college of police leadership. We expect it to have started by March of this year. The college will be at Bramshill and will work through the National Policing Improvement Agency; it is about training people, giving them the skills that they need, and helping them to develop and move forward. The system adopted by the national college for school leadership has been successful, and we think that the new college will be a successful innovation. It will bring together leadership programmes in the NPIA, and it will be headed by a deputy chief constable, with the board chaired by ACPO from March this year.
The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of helping people to consider moving around the country. I do not want to get into semantics or dance on the head of a pin, because I think that I agree with him. We should not be about directing people, but we should be about ensuring that they are aware of all the opportunities and possible advantages that are available to them. If we are not careful, we may get into semantics. I do not think that people should be able to say, You have to go here or there, but an important role for the new, involved SAP could be to make people more aware of available opportunities and advantages. The SAP will not necessarily have the power to direct, but it will be able to advise the Secretary of State on any particular matter that it thinks is relevant. Of course, let us rememberthe hon. Member for Chesterfield needs to remember thisthat the current process is that we have the assessment and strategic command calls, the police authority advertises, then the senior appointments panel looks at that and determines whether they are the appropriate people for the position they have applied for. Then it goes back to the police authority. The fact is, at the end of the day, it is still the police authority that will actually select who they want for the job. The new, reformed SAP process is simply about trying to ensure that there is a greater number of candidates for the posts on offer.
The purpose of amendment 49 is to make the senior appointments panel wholly appointed by the Secretary of State. The ability of the APA and ACPO to nominate members to the panel reflects the tripartite leadership of policing and the balance to be struck in oversight of the senior leadership pool between the national interest of Government, the interests of senior officers themselves, and the interests of police authorities seeking strong leadership of their force. APA and ACPO membership is a key basis of the non-statutory panel which currently exists. Leadership at all levels of the service is crucial to delivering for the public. There is important work for the new panel to undertake in taking a strategic approach to senior leadership, to help ensure that all senior officer posts have an appropriate range of candidates and to provide clarity to potential candidates about the skills and needs of the service. The centralisation implied by the amendment would not, in my viewand I appreciate that this is a probing amendmentcommand the confidence of candidates considering progression to the senior ranks or police authorities seeking the best candidates.
The purpose of amendment 50 is to limit the number of representative members on the senior appointments panel to 10, and for the Secretary of State to consult with ACPO and APA before making these appointments. We do not envisage a large panelit is difficult to say exactly what numberbut we do not see a particular need to define an upper limit of representative numbers in legislation, especially as the amendment does not define an upper limit for the independent members. We need more flexibility than that. More importantly, the amendment, when taken together with amendment 49, also in the name of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, would have the effect of centralising the appointments process. Again, I do not think that would command the confidence of candidates considering progression to the senior ranks, or police authorities seeking the best candidates. Nor do I believe that it recognises the proper role of police authorities and chief officers in the appointments system.
With the remarks I made before, but more formally at the end, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

Hugh Bayley: I am minded to have a clause stand part debate when we get to the appropriate point, and with that assurance, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds could indicate briefly whether he wishes to press his amendment.
Mr. Ruffleyindicated assent.

Hugh Bayley: The hon. Gentleman has indicated that he wishes to withdraw his amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

David Ruffley: I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 2, page 2, line 22, at end insert
which shall be published and laid before Parliament..

Hugh Bayley: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 52, in clause 2, page 3, line 6, at end insert
and Her Majestys Inspectors of Constabulary shall submit an annual report to the Secretary of State on the operation of the Senior Appointments process in each police force area..

David Ruffley: These two amendments go to the question of how the new arrangements will be inspected and assessed. The whole question of independent inspection is one that the Opposition have been looking at for some time. In the Governments green paper, they discussed a more independent HMIC, reporting to Parliament in a way it does not do at the moment. The concept of having an MPC-style committee as part of the HMIC regime was floated. All those things go to the heart of independence, and the amendments probe how we will independently assess the operation of this new regime. Will there be more people suited to certain jobs applying for key jobs? Will the object of the new regime be delivered and how will we measure its success?
To answer that question we need to go back to one or two of ACPOs concerns about the change that is proposed in the clause. In relation to the SAP changes outlined in the Green Paper, ACPO said that there should be a key role for HMIC in many aspects of career development of senior officers, in particular the performance development review process. It also said that
The continuation of SAP under the chairmanship of HMCIC
is something that it wants to be continued. The clause deals with an independent chairman under the new regime. However, ACPO and others say that it should continue to be a sworn officer, and that the head of the inspectorateHMCICshould chair SAP. Its argument is interesting because it says that
HMIC should continue to lead on PDR completion utilising their professional judgement borne from practical experience and knowledge of the challenges that are faced everyday by Chief Officers within the police service.
This goes to the heart of my amendments. In relation to the Green Paper, ACPO said that the suggestion that there would be a conflict of interest for HMIC in a new role is spurious. That is to say that the Government believeas do Ithat if HMIC is involved in the PDR process and appointments, it might look a bit odd perhaps for the inspectorate to be inspecting some of the appointments and PDRs for which it was largely responsible. The Government thought that that might be a conflict of interest, and ACPO said that that was spurious.
To use its own analogy, ACPO wants more of a parallel with GP assessments. It says that in the health service, assessments are always done by clinicians rather than those governing the service. ACPO likes the idea of sworn officers of HMIC doing the inspecting. My amendments would have HMIC inspecting the new regime, but not chairing the panel. My understanding is that Ministers want an independent chair so that the alleged conflict of interests to which I have referred does not arise.
We need to have inspection without fear or favour. The Minister might say that it is implied in the clauses, but these two amendmentsparticularly amendment 52 spell out that
Her Majestys Inspectors of Constabulary shall submit an annual report to the Secretary of State on the operation of the Senior Appointments process in each police force area.
In other words, through the amendment, HMIC would not chair the panel, but could go in and inspect what the panel does without fear or favour. That inspection should be published and submitted to the Secretary of State. We also suggest that reports are explicitly laid before Parliament.
The role of HMIC will be strengthened anyway. The non-statutory changesthe HMIC reform that I referred to at the start of my remarksdo not require primary legislation, which is why they are not in the Bill, but I understand that they will take place this year. What might this inspectorate be inspecting force by force? There are a couple of things that it might want to focus on. How is the fixed term appointment regime operating? We have heard from Sir Norman Bettison, and others, that the fixed term appointment regime is not an unalloyed benefit for senior appointments. Clause 3 says that new arrangements have to be made for senior officers who want to terminate their service before the end of a fixed term appointment. There is a lot of debate about the fixed term appointment regime. I proffer no particular view myself; it seems to work quite well.
However, suppose that fixed-term appointments of five years were seen to be a bar to flexible movement. Sir Norman said in his evidence last week that that was true in some cases. To paraphrase, he said that a five-year window might not be appropriate for certain high flyers. The implication was that it might be a bit of a straitjacket. The reports that I propose would tackle such issues, so that there is a clear examination of how the regime is working, perhaps even probing current assumptions. It is certainly my assumption that the fixed-term appointment regime is here to stay, but others in the wider policing community say that that is not so.
There are other things that these reports and inspections will need to lay bare. In its response to the policing Green Paper in October 2008, the APA said:
The concept of fixed-term contracts should be reviewed in order to better reflect those used in other public service organisations.
That supports what I have just argued. Once again, let us hear ACPOs response:
The Green Paper raises the question of constraints upon the development of sufficient numbers of Chief Officers of good quality. However, the Green Paper fails to acknowledge the impact and influence of Fixed Term Appointments (FTAs) of a maximum of five years. FTAs have increased the turnover of Chief Constables so that there is a constant churn of leadership, which ACPO considers to be detrimental to organisational development and partnership building. FTAs, more than any other factor, put a strain on the pipeline of talent.
I do not necessarily agree with that. Being an honest kind of fellow, I openly admit that I need to reflect on that more, but there certainly seems to be evidence from ACPO that the FTA is not an unalloyed benefit. Surely, the reports, laid bare for everyone to see, could tackle some of the big structural of issues that are being talked about in terms of getting better talent management, better succession planning and the right high-calibre people in the right jobs at the right time, which is what the new panel is supposed to do.
We disagree with ACPO, which believes that the head of the panel should be HMCIC. We believe that the inspectorate should be more independent, and we would achieve that by having a chair of the panel who is not HMCIC. We would also like a force-by-force report to be produced to assess ruthlessly how succession planning is working, year on year, force by force, not just in relation to the chief and deputy chief constable, but in relation to the other senior ranks, too. On that non-probing basis, I end my remarks on amendments Nos. 51 and 52.

Vernon Coaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman again for his support for the independence of the chair of SAP. I agree that it is important. As I said, I tend to agree with ACPO a lot, but not always. I was trying to make the point in the previous debate that it will sometimes in the end say, This is our view, but you are the Government and you govern. That is a sensible, grown-up approach.
It would not be appropriate for HMCIC to hold the role under the new system, as it takes on its strengthened role of performance improvement. That changes the situation. Of course, it does not mean that HMIC, and the chief inspector in particular, will not play an important part in the senior appointments process and how all of this will work. The hon. Gentleman is right, however, about the chair of the panel.
As always, the difficulty is moving from one system to another. As we all know, that is often where the greatest difficulty occurs, even when people agree with the changes. That is why we have tried, in the interim, to use the high regard that everyone has for Sir Ronnie Flanagan and put him into that position to help us move to where we want to be. That seems to have helped somewhat.
I welcome the hon. Gentlemans support for the greater independence of HMIC from the Government. It is not only a case of it being independent so that it can hold the police to account, and help the police to improve by inspecting them. It is also about us saying to HMIC, You have that new strengthened independent role from us. It is beneficial to have that set out much more clearly.
The hon. Gentleman asked about fixed-term appointments. No evidence has come to me in the Home Office to say that that is a particular problem. It sometimes gets raised, but people have not said that it is a real issue that is causing problems. Other aspects of the appointments processhow we encourage and develop itare much more of a problem. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the five-year term can be extended should the police authority wish to do so. Although I understand the sentiment of what he is trying say with respect to publicising the work of SAP, part of the way in which he is trying to do that could give rise to an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.
The purpose of amendment 51 is to ensure that the reports of the senior appointments panel are published and laid before Parliament. I do not think that I will assuage all of the hon. Gentlemans doubts, but it was always our intention to publish its reports to increase the transparency of the senior appointments process. I am happy to put on the record our commitment to doing that. The requirement will be set out in SAPs constitutional arrangements, which will be made under clause 2. Although the theme of the amendment is in line with that transparency, requiring a report to be made to Parliament is not the appropriate mechanism to achieve it. The Home Office annual report will make appropriate reference to the work of the senior appointments panel in future.
In keeping with the theme of probing for transparency in the senior appointments panel, amendment 52 would place a duty on HMIC to provide an annual report to the Secretary of State on the operation of the senior appointments process in every police force area. In my view, it is the panel itself that will publicly report on the functioning of the appointments system and the strategic challenges to address, taking into account the views of APA, ACPO and others, as well as the professional input of the inspectorate. Moreover, the Secretary of State already has the poweran important point, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman knowsunder section 54 of the Police Act 1996 to require HMIC to prepare reports on particular functions of a police authority, which could include, where the Home Secretary felt it was appropriate, the workings of the senior appointments process in that force.
In the light of my comments, and my commitment to publish the senior appointments panels reports, I hope that the hon. Gentleman can see that, although I have some support for his amendments, they are unnecessary and, potentially, overly bureaucratic.

David Ruffley: Having heard the Ministers remarks and his commitment to publication and airing of such important matters, and to not doing so in a bureaucratic way, I am satisfied that he has met the points of Her Majestys Opposition. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

David Ruffley: Having regard to your earlier ruling or indication that you would allow a clause stand part debate, Mr. Bayley, I point out that I raised all the issues of a clause stand part nature that I wished to raise in my speeches to the two groups of amendments that we have just debated. The Minister indicated in his speeches that he wanted to pick up in the clause stand part debate on some of the things that he did not cover in reply to me during the amendment debates. I am happy to reiterate that there is broad support on the Opposition Benches for reform and enhancement of the SAP, but I would be grateful if the Minister fleshed out in a bit more detail what the nature of the new directive powers will be and whether he can describe how this greater direction will operate. In short, does it go as far as the militaristic-style direction of individuals into certain posts at certain times that Sir Norman Bettison indicated?
If it is not thatI imagine that the Minister will say, It is not and I agree that it should not bein what way will the clause deliver more directive power than the existing regime that the clause seeks to reform? I am unclear how the new regime will enhance things. Sir Norman, wearing his ACPO hat, suggested that he is not clear how the clause will improve things. I repeat: short of militaristic-style directionhis words, not mineit is difficult to see how the new regime can make a significant difference. I would be grateful to hear the Ministers views.

Vernon Coaker: I try very hard to answer the questions put. I recognise that I do not always answer them to the satisfaction of hon. Members, so I apologise profusely for not specifically answering that question about militaristic-style direction. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We do not believe that the measures should lead to militaristic-style direction in which people are ordered to go to different parts of the country in order to take up various positions. I hope that that is clear.
I thought that the hon. Member for Chesterfield was going to make a couple of remarks. The clause is extremely important. There is no doubt that everybody accepts that there is a need to increase the number of candidates putting themselves forward for senior positions and to encourage greater diversity among candidates. How do we deliver that? It must be said that the response, given that we do not have and would not want the ability to order people around, can often appear almost weak. It sounds good, but what difference will it make?
One of the reasons why we are saying that we should move from the current basis to a statutory basis is that we can then start to influence the work of the senior appointments panel and give it greater clout, greater credibility and a greater sense of importance. I think that that is what it will do. The current membership of the SAP is seven. They are important and good people, but we want to have a much broader membership than is currently the case.
Currently, we have an independent chair, representatives from ACPO and APA, independent members, somebody from the Home Office, a representative of Her Majestys inspectorate of constabulary and somebody from the Metropolitan Police Authority. When there is something that the SAP particularly wants to discuss, other people are invited along. However, we are sayingwe can all read the clause for ourselvesthat the panel will consist of
a chair and other members appointed by the Secretary of State.
That could include people with particular expertise, judgment or points of view to bring. They will not represent any body in particular, but they might have a particular opinion or skill that makes a difference.
The panel will also include representative members. They will be nominated by the tripartite Government system that I mentioned earlier, consisting of the Home Office, APA and ACPO. To answer the hon. Members for Chesterfield and for Bury St. Edmunds, the SAP will have much broader membership, bringing together people with a much greater diversity of views and opinions, and it will be tasked specifically with certain things to do, rather than sifting appointments as its primary function.
I point out to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds that, importantly, although the SAP does an admirable job sifting through appointments, members of police authorities consider appointments to senior police positions in their own area and then give them to the SAP to look at. Instead, the SAP will take a much more proactive role. Rather than reacting to the people sent to it, the SAP will be charged with increasing the number of people that police authorities consider in the first place. That is a significant and fundamental change in how the new body will operate. Instead of being a passive organisationI must be careful, because I do not want people to read this and think that I am having a goit will be a proactive, dynamic body charged with doing something to make a difference.
If the Home Secretary is concerned about something, she could refer it to the new body, so that matters relating to the training needs of senior officers could be considered. People would be considered not only on the basis of whether they were any good for a job, but on the basis of what would need to happen for their training needs to be improved, developed and supported, so that the pool increases.
I am surprised that police officers have not been saying for decades, Why dont we have what is regarded as good practice in other professions, so that we are helped to develop? Perhaps they have been saying that, but they have not been heard. I was a teacherI think some other members of the Committee were toobut I have worked in different professions. The first thing that a person wants in their profession is to be supported in developing the talents, abilities and skills that they need to progress. That happens to a certain extent within the police force, but charging a body with the function, aim and objective of increasing the number of people who come forward for senior appointments is fundamentally different from what happens now.
There are lots of papers on black and minority ethnic recruitment, including one that I helped to put together. We should tell people to support that workI am not saying there has been no progressso that, instead of our being surprised when somebody from an ethnic minority is appointed, the surprise will be when there is no ethnic minority candidate. Getting to such a position would be a significant change. Surely a new, high-profile SAP is part of delivering that.

Paul Holmes: I have listened with great interest to the Minister. He has thrown more light on what I said earlierI was not sure how having an SAP of 10, 15, 20 or however many people would solve the problem of the lack of people coming forward for positions such as chief constable. He referred to his background in education. I, too, was a teacher, and there was a much more decentralised system. All the way through schools, middle management were encouraged to develop peoples skills. The Government set up the National College for School Leadership in Nottingham, which was very effective, but things are more decentralised now. There are 3,000 secondary schools, whereas there are only 43 chief constables and police authorities, but to what extent is relying on one small panel of people, rather than embedding career development all the way through the system, the answer?

Vernon Coaker: Change has taken place in the police service in this country, and it is trying to embed career development. We can see that if we look at the training and development that is taking place in forces up and down the country. The police service is trying to do many of the things that I am talking about from a national perspective through the SAP. We are attempting to give development a strategic direction. If I were to sum up what it is about, I would say that we always need something to be the catalyst for change. Things will not necessarily happen if people simply wish for them to happen. If we want something to happen, we must create a mechanism and some sort of process to drive it.
To be fair to the hon. Members for Chesterfield and for Bury St. Edmunds, they have supported the SAP. If we get it rightthere will be tension about thatit will act as a dynamo, or as a catalyst for change. It cannot change things from the centre, but it can create momentum from the centre to support the work of individual forces. That and the power to confer additional functions, should it prove necessary, are important parts of the reform programme that is taking place.
Notwithstanding some of the debate about the independence of the chair and the role of this or that, the police service should sometimes take more credit for the way in which it is trying to embrace some of the reforms. The service is not the always the last bastion of resistance to proposals; rather, it embraces change. However, sometimes, rightly, it asks us to reflect on what a proposal will mean.
We had a great debate about clause 1, but clause 2 is a hugely significant change. If the SAP works, which I believe it will, it will support the police in bringing about the changes with respect to senior officers that they, we and the communities of this country want.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Regulations about senior officers

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill

David Ruffley: I do not wish to detain the Committee too long. I had not planned to speak to clause 3, but I noticed that it makes provision for
payments to senior officers who cease to hold office before the end of a fixed term appointment.
That caught my eye because of the debate that we have just had, in which I quoted remarks by the APA and ACPO about the current operation of the FTA regime. I said that I was not strongly against it. Helpfully, the Minister added that he had seen no empirical evidence that there were problems with FTA. He said that there was anecdotal evidence, but that no evidence had come across his desk that would lead him as a Minister to reconsider the whole regime. Fair enough; so far, so good. I wonder, therefore, why clause 3 takes specific steps to make such payments as I just quoted. Is it because more and more senior officers are exiting fixed-term appointments before the end of the due term? Otherwise, why do we need this clause? I would have thought that that would be provided for under existing legislation. I would be very grateful, therefore, if he could explain why the provision in clause 3 is necessary. Is it because there are more breaks in fixed-term appointments than was the case formerly?

Vernon Coaker: No. That is not the reason for this clause, as far as I am awareI make that caveat. I have seen no evidence that more breaks are occurring before the five years of a fixed term contract are up. It is funny: when I looked at clause 3, I thought, I know what the hon. Gentleman will ask: why are you saying this when you have clause 3?

David Ruffley: You were one step ahead of me.

Vernon Coaker: I only just thought of it, but the hon. Gentleman probably thought of it earlier, which is why he asked the question.
In all seriousness, there is no ulterior motive for the clause. It does not seek to fix any problem. Given the focus on performance, the enhanced role of police authorities and the operation of PDRs for chief constables, which is being looked at by Her Majestys inspectorate of constabulary, it seems appropriate to include in the Bill the possibility of building in flexibility. Were more terminations to occurI do not expect or desire that to happenthe clause would provide the flexibility for police authorities to act appropriately and properly with respect to chief officers. It will give them the opportunity to pay the appropriate compensation to chief officers, should they choose to leave or should it be agreed that they leave before the end of their fixed term contract. I hope that those remarks satisfy the hon. Gentleman.

David Ruffley: I am struggling to understand why there are not arrangements under existing statute or common law in respect of a senior officer who wishes to terminate his service before the expiry of the fixed term. I do not know how the system operated before the Bill was drafted. What problem is the clause seeking to deal with? Did provisions under statute or certain cases cause difficulty so that such a clause was required? I am genuinely puzzled about whether such matters were catered for prior to the Bill.

Vernon Coaker: Again, the answer is no. The hon. Gentleman might be surprised to know that such matters were not dealt with under statute but, given some of the proposed changes in the performance framework, the Bill has provided the opportunity to include a provision so that there is legislative ability to deal with matters should it be necessary in future. First, there was not a statutory ability to take such action. Secondly, a problem has not arisen but if a problem arose in the future, we will have the ability to deal with it if we wish to do so.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Metropolitan police force appointments

Paul Holmes: I beg to move amendment 59, in clause 4, page 4, leave out line 22.

Hugh Bayley: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 60, in clause 4, page 4, leave out line 31.
Amendment 61, in clause 4, page 4, leave out line 40.
New clause 3Appointment of chief constables and assistant chief constables
(1) The Police Act 1996 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 11(1) (appointment and removal of chief constables) leave out but subject to the approval of the Secretary of State.
(3) In section 11(2) leave out acting with the approval of the Secretary of State.
(4) In section 11(3), leave out  Before seeking the approval of the Secretary of State under subsection (2),.
(5) In section 12(2) (assistant chief constables) leave out and subject to the approval of the Secretary of State.
(6) In section 12(5) leave out  Secretary of State and insert relevant police authority.
(7) For section 2 (removal of chief constables etc) substitute
(1) A police authority may exercise its power under section 11 to call upon the chief constable to retire in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness.
(2) Before requiring the exercise or the similar power exercisable with respect to an assistant chief constable, the police authority shall give the chief constable or assistant chief constable an opportunity to make representations to him and shall consider any representations so made..

Paul Holmes: With a mind to what Sir Nicholas said at this mornings sitting about the fact that we had had an extensive debate and that we wanted to make some progress on the Bill, and with a view to the fact that in most Committees of which I have been a member in the past eight years, all too often, we only get through the first two thirds of the Bill and do not reach the important parts, I shall be brief about the amendments and new clause 3. We went through all the arguments that lie behind those provisions this morning and there is no point in repeating them in detail two or three hours later given that anyone can read the record of our proceedings.
In a nutshell, amendments 59, 60 and 61 would remove the power for the Secretary of State to oversee and have the final say over approval of the appointment of assistant commissioners of the Metropolitan police. New clause 3 would do the same, in effect, in respect of the Secretary of States power to have the final say about the appointment of chief constables and assistant chief constables the length and breadth of England and Wales. Our argument is the same as it was in respect of new clauses 2 and 4, which is that that there should be a major devolution of power away from the centrefrom London and central Governmentto local authorities and local communities. It is hard therefore to understand why there should be a need for the Secretary of State to exercise power over the appointment of the most senior police officers, whether in Derbyshire, Northumberland, Wales or London. All the arguments about decentralising power that were made this morning apply to the amendments under discussion.
I am sure that the Minister will explain in a minute why he disagrees with my argument. I shall not press the amendment to a Division because we know that the Labour party and the Conservative party would oppose it, albeit for different reasons. Before the Minister explains why I am completely wrong, which we can take as read from this mornings debate, will he pick up on a couple of points about the existing powers of the Secretary of State with regard to senior police officers and chief constables? We recently had a debate about the position in London with the Metropolitan police. There is a slightly strange situation, as both the Secretary of State and the Mayor of London are supposed to make the decisions about the final appointment of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the dismissal of the person in that post. We had a two-way debate and hoo-hah about exactly who should be pulling the plug on Sir Ian Blair, for example. The Mayor took the initiative on that.
What exactly does the Minister see as the role of the Secretary of State in deciding who should be the most senior police officer in London? I accept that that is complicated by the fact that, unusually, all chief constables in London are automatically heads of the Governments anti-terrorist strategy for the whole nation. With regard to chief constables throughout England and Wales in general, in the other 42 police authority areas, will the Minister explain why the Secretary of State needs that power? Why does a central Government Minister need to decide, yes or no, whether someone should be the chief constable?
There is also the power to dismiss chief constables. I believe that that was last used in Derbyshire in 1990, nearly 20 years ago. The power is not widely used at all, and I am not sure when it was last used before 1990. I would be interested to know why the Government believe that the Secretary of State should be the person to exercise that power, rather than the local police authority which, by whatever processits members are elected or appointed at the momentrepresents its local community and does the interviews for that senior post, yet can then be gainsaid and overruled by the Secretary of State from London.

David Ruffley: Why in the amendment and in the clause do Liberal Democrat Members and the Minister not see fit to refer to the Mayor of London in relation to the appointments? This relates particularly to the appointments below that of Metropolitan Police Commissioner. I mention it only for highly topical reasons, which I am sure the Minister will want to reflect on in his remarks.
Constitutionally, the appointment of a new Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is, under British law as it is currently extant, a matter solely for the Home Secretaryin this case, the right hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith). Of course, that was the case until the current Mayor of London cleverly and brilliantly in many ways kicked the door down and got a seat at the table at which the Home Secretary interviewed candidates for the post of Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Even though he had no constitutional basis for being involved, he was involved by the Home Secretary. I think that she was right to do that. Almost in defiance of what statute says, she indicated that as a pragmatic move it would be unhelpful if any Metropolitan Police Commissioner whom she appointed did not get on with the Mayor of London, so what we have is an extremely interesting constitutional grey area. The facts are manifest. It is clearly the case that there has been some derogation of the power of the Home Secretary solely to appoint the Metropolitan Police Commissioner; and if there is an interesting grey area in relation to that post, the Metropolitan police force appointments that are the subject of clause 4 might equally well be at issue.
Has the Minister given any thought to putting the matter on a proper statutory footing so that there is devastating clarity on the issue of Metropolitan police force appointments? I am referring to the appointments below Metropolitan Police Commissioner under clause 4, but equally, for the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister say what the position is now, so far as this Home Secretary is concerned, when it comes to making an appointment to the position of Metropolitan Police Commissioner? In the light of those topical events, it would be useful to hear the Ministers views on the way in which what happened in that case impacts on the other, more junior appointments that are the subject of the clause.

Vernon Coaker: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I point out to him that Boris Johnson would not be Mayor were it not for the Governments reforms, which included making him chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Hugh Bayley: Order. I am drawing a line under the discussion of the role of the Mayor of London. I ask hon. Members to return to the amendments.

Vernon Coaker: The point that I was trying to make, tongue-in-cheek, was that, of course, the Metropolitan Police Authority is responsible for the Metropolitan police. Furthermore, on the issue of Metropolitan police appointments, I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman welcomed the fact that we have ensured in legislation that the Mayor of London, whoever they are, chairs the Metropolitan Police Authority.
At the nub of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Chesterfield is the fact that they would remove any provision to consult the Secretary of State. They are good amendments in the sense that they would, for the first time, give the Metropolitan Police Commissioner a role in the appointment of some ranks in which heor she, sometime in the future, I hopehas not been involved before. With due respect to the hon. Gentleman, his amendment misses this point: the three ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service commander, deputy assistant commissioner and assistant commissionerto which the amendment refers, are equivalent to chief constable, deputy chief constable and so on. The hon. Gentleman does not need me to go through all thatthey are ACPO-ranked officers.
The Met is important, because it comprises one quarter of the police service, but many Met officers, and other senior police officers in the rest of the country, hold responsibilities not only in the Metropolitan Police Service, important as that is, or in their own force, but in ACPO for a number of different things. For example, they have responsibilities for knife crime and gangs, and national responsibilities for a range of different things. That point also relates to the national responsibilities of the commissioner and the deputy commissioner. I have said this to the hon. Gentleman before, and I do not mean it pejoratively or nastily, but if he, or the hon. Members for Hornchurch and for Bury St. Edmunds, were in power and people were appointed to positions that were not only important to the individual force but had national implications, they would want to ensure that they had some role in the appointment.

Paul Holmes: I have still not heard an explanation why the Government feel they have to micro-manage the appointment of senior police officers, whether they are senior officers in the Metropolitan police, or assistant chief constables and chief constables throughout the country, as in new clause 3. If professional people are to go for the posts, having come up through the grooming process of the senior appointments panel, and they are to be interviewed and appointed by the relevant police authorities, whether in London or elsewhere, why do the Government feel that they must micro-manage and second-guess the process, saying, No, youve made a bad appointment. Were not going to accept that person? It may, or may not, have happened with Sir Ian Blair recently, with the Mayor moving in on that appointment, but the last time that it had happened in the country was 1990 in Derbyshire. Why do the Government feel that they must micro-manage these individual personnel appointments?

Vernon Coaker: In the vast majorityin fact, in almost allcases, there is no micro-management, because the recommendations of the police authority, or whoever it is, are approved. However, as I have said, the hon. Gentlemans amendments would remove any role for the Secretary of State, and many of these people play important national strategic roles in serious and organised crime, counter-terrorism and such things. The issue is not about micro-management, but about ensuring that the Secretary of State has a reserve power for the employment of those people. It is not about their appointment to an individual police force. Given the seniority of the role, it is about reflecting on the contribution that they would make to the national policing agenda. That is a point of difference between us. It is certainly not about trying to ensure that we are involved in every single appointment of a senior police officer in this country; it is about trying to ensure that we have the opportunity to be involved where necessary.
In certain circumstances, it may be necessary for the Home Secretary to take action directly to secure the removal of a chief officer under section 42 of the Police Act 1996. The hon. Gentleman made that point, and I want to put this on record: there are cases where efficiency and effectiveness questions are so severe that the Home Secretary needs the power to act in the public interest, notwithstanding the actions of the police authority. Examples of cases where that could have been required include the need to restore confidence in Humberside police after the Soham murders and in Sussex police after the shooting of James Ashley.
Although the amendment would not necessarily affect the power in section 42, it is clear for the reasons that I have given that the Secretary of State has a role in relation to the removal of chief officers. That role should be retained. With those comments, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendments.

Paul Holmes: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

Police collaboration

Vernon Coaker: I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 5, page 6, line 3, at end insert
( ) A police authority may not make an agreement which includes provision about employees who are under the direction and control of a chief officer..
Our clauses allow for separate collaboration agreements for police forces and authorities, an arrangement carried over from current legislation that preserves the important distinction between the functions of police forces and police authorities. The amendment further clarifies the position by ensuring that when police authorities make collaboration agreements, the agreements will not capture staff under the direction and control of a chief officer. To do otherwise would lead to an intrusion from the police authority on a chief constables operational independence: in other words, the independent control that he exercises over his staff. The amendment seeks to make that distinction clear.

Amendment 2 agreed to.

Paul Holmes: I beg to move amendment 56, in clause 5, page 6, leave out lines 32 and 33.

Hugh Bayley: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: amendment 57, in clause 5, page 7, leave out from line 31 to line 8 on page 8.
Amendment 58, in clause 5, page 8, leave out lines 9 to 13.
Amendment 55, in clause 5, page 8, line 11, at end insert
, the period of notice shall be such as the Secretary of State sees fit..

Paul Holmes: The logic and rationale for amendments 56 to 58 can be taken as read from the detail of this mornings debate. They are all part of the same principle. On amendment 56, for example, we do not see why the Secretary of State should have to be consulted if more than six police forces decide to collaborate. I am not quite sure why the arbitrary figure of six was chosen. Why not four or eight? Why is it felt to be necessary that the Home Secretary should have the power to say, Yes, we can have six police forces, or seven, or eight, collaborating. It seems to be a completely unnecessary degree of central control in a system that we would prefer to be devolved completely to directly elected, responsible and powerful local police authorities.
The same point arises in amendment 57. We do not see why the Secretary of State should have the power to direct the police authorities in collaboration arrangements. It is the same for amendment 58.
In response to amendment 57, the Minister might talk about the need to get authorities to collaborate on terrorism issues. However, in July 2007, when there was the terrorism issue, the Metropolitan Police Service worked very closely with the police force in Leeds, for example, without the need for prescribed direction from the centre. At the time of the tube bombings, police forces all over the country worked very closely with the Metropolitan policeregular and ad hoc collaborationbecause of that emergency. The following year, a friend of mine, whose is a detective in Chesterfield, spent a lot of time in London on a semi-permanent basis working with the Metropolitan police to swell the ranks of the Criminal Investigation Department and to investigate that major act of terrorism.
Collaboration, therefore, can and does take place, without the need for the Secretary of State to make directionsto say yes, to say no and so on. That is all part of this mornings debate on new clauses 2 and 4 and, more recently, new clause 3. I do not see the rationale for central Government having that degree of control over every decision and action taken by police authorities around the country.

Hugh Bayley: Before I call the next speaker, I should say that I have received indications that colleagues want to move fairly quickly through the remaining three groups of amendments to clause 5, which are largely technical in nature, in order to have a stand part debate to discuss the general principles of collaboration.

David Ruffley: Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Bayley, of the order of business. I rise briefly to speak to amendment 55 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch. It would spell out that, in circumstances where the Secretary of State might wish to terminate a collaboration agreement, the length of
the period of notice shall be such as the Secretary of State sees fit.
In some circumstancesperhaps not a national emergency a collaboration agreement might be wholly inadequate. I am thinking perhaps of pressing serious organised crime problems or concerns. If the Secretary of State wished to terminate an agreement, one would not want it to drag on for an unnecessarily long time. The Opposition would not want the Secretary of State to be tied to onerously long notice periods, which would fetter his ability to take action in the face of an immediate problem, perhaps of a regional or even a national kind. The wording in the amendment is for the avoidance of doubt.
Proposed new section 23H(1) reads:
The Secretary of State may terminate a collaboration agreement by notice to the parties to the agreement.
One could construe those words to mean that the notice period should be determined by the Secretary of State. In the circumstances that I have outlined, that would seem to provide for the proper discretion that Ministers will seek in responding to short-term and pressing problems. I hope that those do not occur, but the unforeseen sometimes doesif that is not self-contradictory. In that spirit of clarification and enhancing the drafting of the clause, I offer my amendment.

Vernon Coaker: I shall run quickly through the amendments, bearing it in mind that people have asked to get to the clause stand part debate. Amendment 55 adds detail to the Secretary of States power to terminate an agreement. That detail, should the scenario arise, would help to ensure that the Secretary of State makes clear to those collaborating the time frame within which the joint arrangements should cease. There is something in that amendment, but I ask for it to be withdrawn. I will have a look at the issue and come back to it on Report, if necessary. It is a reasonable amendment to have made, however, and it might add something to the clause.
Amendment 56 would remove the requirement for a chief constable or police authority to consult the Secretary of State when making a collaboration agreement involving six or more forces. Six is the biggest number in a police force region. We are not saying that such an agreement should not happen; but if a limit is not established, we could be talking about something almost the size of the north of England. We therefore think it necessary for there to be a limit above which the Secretary of State should be consulted. That does not mean that such a thing should not happen or that we would say no, but if it starts to get beyond that size, it is appropriate that the Secretary of State should have a role and be consulted.
I oppose the idea of removing all the Secretary of States direction-making powers or her ability to terminate an agreement; that is not the right way to proceed. The ability to direct agreements or to terminate those that have gone wrong is not something that one necessarily wants, but we cannot have a situation in which the Secretary of State does not have that power.
Paul Holmesrose

Vernon Coaker: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I know the point that he is going to make. When he is Home Secretary, I will get someone to sit on the Committee of the relevant Bill and ask him whether he thinks he should give up that power. I honestly do not believe that he would.

Paul Holmes: I appreciate that we are talking about a whole culture change. It would be a huge culture shock for any Ministerbe it policing, education, or healthto give up micro-managing all these aspects of life. The Minister said that it could not happen and it could not work, but it does in most western democratic countries, where central Governments do not have power over decisions on local health provision, the police force, education and so forth. It is a culture shock that one day, hopefully, the British Government will get to grips with.

Vernon Coaker: I am interested in the hon. Gentlemans local decision making. If I may digress slightly, the next time he has a debate and he goes on about postcode provision, I shall come back to him about local delivery of services. Again, when he is Home Secretary, he will get not only what I have just said, but the demand for the local services that I have just asked for. When it comes to postcode provision, with one thing being available in one area and not available in the next, he will then get a demand for him not to give local democracy out, but to take it back, because people do not always like difference. Perhaps that is also something for him to think about.

Simon Burns: The Minister said that amendment 55 could possibly have merit and gave the Committee the commitment that he would look at it again to see whether it should be incorporated into the Bill, without giving any commitment that that would happen. Given that he is a decent and honourable man, if, on reflection, he comes to the conclusion that amendment 55 has merit and should be included, will he be kind enough on Report to table the amendment, standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds, who dreamt it up?

Vernon Coaker: I am not sure that I can go that far, if I am really honest. It is a kind offer and I know that the hon. Member for West Chelmsford is only trying to save me a good deal of work. Should that not be possibleI have reservations about whether it will bebut should I, on reflection, find it appropriate for the Government to table an amendment similar if not identical to amendment 55, I shall be profuse in my praise. Perhaps that would help.

Simon Burns: It would be a good step forward.

Vernon Coaker: Especially if the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was present in the Chamberwould that be helpful?

Simon Burns: I am very grateful.

Vernon Coaker: I am sorry, Mr. Bayley. We have been at it a long time and I know that we are due to finish. The serious point is that amendment 55 is something we need to look at; it is an important point. I do not see how we could remove any requirement for the Secretary of State to be consulted. There is a need for the Secretary of State to be consulted above six forces or more, which is the size of the biggest region. It is important for the Secretary of State to retain powers to direct where necessary and to terminate an agreement where necessary.
With those comments, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn. If it is not withdrawn, I am afraid we shall have to vote against it.

Paul Holmes: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

David Ruffley: I beg to move amendment 53, in clause 5, page 6, line 41, at end insert
and such agreement shall include procedures for achieving a settlement of all outstanding financial and legal liabilities between parties upon a party terminating its contractual obligations under a collaboration agreement..
I am conscious that we need to whip through the amendments, but I would like to take a little more than a minute to speak to my amendment, which is of a technical nature. I want to spend a bit of time saying why it is important. I hope that the Minister will humour me with this amendment as much as he did with the last. If he takes my earlier amendment on board, and gives me credit for it, it will be his personal contribution to my personal development review process. I would be hugely grateful.
Amendment 53 is important because we all believe, whichever political party we represent, in the critical importance of partnership working in tackling and fighting crime. As we have said before, and as everyone knows and understands, the police cannot solve, prevent and detect crime on their own, but require co-operative efforts with parts of the health service, local government and so on. Delivering greater partnership workingthis would be true no matter which Government were in officerequires a certain amount of pooling of budgets. The issue of pooling of budgets is the same with police authorities and police forces.
Alongside the concept of putting money into a pot, as Sir Norman Bettison last week and many others have indicated, is the issue of what he called the net donor problem. When different forces and authorities in policing come together in a collaboration agreement, there will be winners and losersdifferent authorities have different cost bases, and his net donor point was well set out in his evidence.
Let us look at how pooling arrangements operate outside a police collaboration set-upI am arguing by analogy here. Crime fighting partners might be a drug action team, a local authority or a parish council that has earmarked money for crime fighting from its parish council precept. There are now pooling arrangements or agreements under which different partners come together and put their money into the crime fighting pot to achieve an objective.
However, anyone who has looked at the pooling of crime fighting budgetsI know that the Minister haswill understand that it is pretty much a hit-and-miss affair. It can be shambolic if the pooling arrangements are not set down clearly in a contract and, cruciallythis is what the amendment is aboutunless there are clear procedures for what happens on exit. If any one partner that brings x to the pot wants to go away with that money halfway through the arrangement, it can be a mess. That is the experience of those in local government and those involved with crime and disorder reduction partnership arrangements to whom I have spoken. There will be legal arguments about who owes what to whom and so on.
This is an argument by analogy: in the Children Act 2004, there are clear arrangements that encourage and support local authorities and their partners to pool budgets when that will improve delivery, especially of health care. However, the arrangements pursuant to that Act have shown us that it is absolutely critical to write down the arrangements for pooling up front.
People in the Local Government Association have advised me that best practice would involve a written, up-front agreement. The agreement should say to all signatory partners that there should be a clear objective, a clear set of service standards, an agreed performance framework and a clear statement of the expected life of the pooling arrangements.
The agreement should also say how any underspend or overspend in the pool will be dealt with, how accountability and responsibility will operate in relation to the pool and how to work with the differing VAT and charging arrangements and different budgetary cycles that might apply to each partner. It should deal with the use and disposal of fixed assets that are brought to the pool by partners who wish to co-operate in a pooling arrangement. Those arrangements should all be written down.
The agreement should also include the delegation of financial responsibility and say whose standing orders should be used. It should set out in advance human resources arrangements for transferring staff and whether TUPEthe Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 and 2006applies. It should say how to build staff time and capacity into spending the pooled budget.

James Brokenshire: My hon. Friend makes a clear case for certainty, but does he agree that we should consider not only the legal challenge, but the performance target challenge? Various organisations seek to pool services and budgets at local level have told me that they find it quite difficult because, in essence, a budget that one partner agencyfor example, a primary care trustmight wish to use could be used externally to satisfy a different performance target. It is almost as if a partner is brought into the pool in a hidden way: even if it wants to join to achieve a wider end, it is a question of ticking the right box to achieve it.

David Ruffley: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, because the burden of my argument, in a different context, is that pooling throws up all sorts of issueshe has added one to the list that I was enumerating.
The experience of parts of public service outwith policing is that many bodies think that they are operating a proper, formal pooling arrangement in partnership. We applaud and embrace such collaborative working and cross-cutting departmental efforts. To repeat: we do not believe that the police should be the only people tasked with delivering crime reduction and crime fighting. However, in contexts outwith law and order, those who have no formal arrangements or agreementsif they do not have an up-front, written agreement about what happens on exit or withdrawalcan suddenly find that they have let themselves in for all sorts of liabilities.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that disagreements can be difficult to resolve, but, in addition, arguing over compromises about what should happen if one partner prematurely, for unforeseen reasons, wants to exit can take up a lot of management time.
Arguing by analogy, then, it seems that the same problem might be in the offing if we have more and more collaborative agreements involving police authorities, chief constables and their forces. That is why my amendment 53 says that any such collaboration agreement
shall include procedures for achieving a settlement of all outstanding financial and legal liabilities between parties upon a party terminating its contractual obligations under a collaboration agreement.
Rather like my earlier amendment, this amendment seeks to strengthen, improve and build on the thrust of the clause, rather than to undermine it. We need that clarification about collaboration arrangements, of which I hope there will be many more, whether under this Government or a future Government of whatever stripe.
We must ensure that such agreements are carried out in a wholly professional way, and we should not rely on good will or that things will be alright on the night. As I have said, too many co-operation and partnership agreements fall foul of the highest standards of planning and governance. While one would not want to be bureaucratic, my amendment signals that collaboration agreements will be writtenwe will get on to this in the clause stand part debatethat they will be very detailed and that they will have to cover as many eventualities as possible. That is why clear procedures should be written into contractual arrangements.
I know of individuals who have been on one side of contractual negotiations in private finance initiative contracts, though not in relation to the Home Office. In one PFI contract, the most obvious, boilerplate clause was seen to be so blindingly obvious that neither the legal advisers to the financiers on one side of the negotiations nor the civil servants on the Whitehall side of negotiations thought of putting it in, and there were problems as a result. When push came to shove and the unforeseen happened, there was disagreement and argument with the attendant waste of management time in working out what was to be done. In the spirit of tightening arrangements for collaboration agreements, I proffer this amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch.

Vernon Coaker: Having received my orders from two separate sources, I shall be brief. Without wishing to carry on the love-in, I accept what the hon. Gentleman has just said and that he seeks to add value to the clause, but there is an issue with the amendment. I accept that financial and legal liabilities might be issues, but there might be other areas to be sorted out, such as staffing and equipment. I draw his attention to proposed new section 23F in clause 5, which is on page 7. It refers to guidance with respect to collaboration agreements, which is something that I will emphasise in the clause stand part debate. Regarding the amendment, I make a commitment to include some of the points he made in the guidance, because that is important.
I also stress the importance of the second part of proposed new section 23F, which states:
In discharging their functions, chief officers and police authorities must have regard to the guidance.
I hope that that answers the hon. Gentlemans point and with that I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

David Ruffley: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

David Ruffley: I beg to move amendment 54, in clause 5, page 7, line 21, leave out paragraph (b). I will be brief. We seek to firm up the obligation for the collaboration agreement to be published. The amendment deletes what I consider a weakening of that overriding obligation to publish the agreement because the sub-clause that I seek to delete states that the alternative to full publication would be to
publish the fact that the agreement has been made and such other details about it as the person thinks appropriate.
In the world of transparency in which we all say we believe and want to work towards, there should be a straightforward commitment and duty to publish the agreement, not to state the fact that an agreement exists. Again, in the spirit of honest and probing inquiry, I rest my remarks.

Vernon Coaker: I understand the point that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds is trying to make about transparency with respect to collaboration agreements. However, the Bill as drafted does balance the need for transparency and operational effectiveness and I believe that the balance as currently constructed in the Bill is right. I know that this is not his intention, but I am concerned that if his amendment were accepted and the argument was taken to the logical conclusion of saying that collaboration agreements carte blanche have to be published, there might be a case in which the location of firearms units, firearms officers and other sensitive policing matters might have to be put into the public domain. I do not think that it is his intention to compromise operational integrity, but it might be an unintended consequence of his amendment. I hope that he will withdraw the amendment. It is my intention, because I believe it is important, that as much as possible should be published without compromising the operational effectiveness of those police forces that have put together that agreement.

David Ruffley: Having regard to the Ministers comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. (Mr. Austin.)

Adjourned till Thursday 4 February at Nine oclock.